Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Causation', 'Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth'' and 'The Poetics'

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3 ideas

3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 5. Truth Bearers
To be true a sentence must express a proposition, and not be ambiguous or vague or just expressive [Lewis]
     Full Idea: Sentences or assertions can be derivately called true, if they succeed in expressing determinate propositions. A sentence can be ambiguous or vague or paradoxical or ungrounded or not declarative or a mere expression of feeling.
     From: David Lewis (Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth' [2001], p.276)
     A reaction: Lewis has, of course, a peculiar notion of what a proposition is - it's a set of possible worlds. I, with my more psychological approach, take a proposition to be a particular sort of brain event.
3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 2. Truthmaker Relation
Truthmakers are about existential grounding, not about truth [Lewis]
     Full Idea: Instances of the truthmaker principle are equivalent to biconditionals not about truth but about the existential grounding of all manner of other things; the flying pigs, or what-have-you.
     From: David Lewis (Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth' [2001])
     A reaction: The question then is what the difference is between 'existential grounding' and 'truth'. There wouldn't seem to be any difference at all if the proposition in question was a simple existential claim.
3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 11. Truthmaking and Correspondence
Truthmaker is correspondence, but without the requirement to be one-to-one [Lewis]
     Full Idea: The truthmaker principle seems to be a version of the correspondence theory of truth, but differs mostly in denying that the correspondence of truths to facts must be one-to-one.
     From: David Lewis (Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth' [2001], p.277)
     A reaction: In other words, several different sentences might have exactly the same truthmaker.